Is that Mr. T? Oh, no, it's not.

Someday, I'll try to go back and fill in the blanks on my lengthy absence from the blogging world, but for now, suffice it to say that the school year has been a pretty hard one. There have been some hilarious moments thrown into the mix, however; honestly, I work in a middle school how could there not be?

Case in point: last Friday, I walked into first period, sixth-grade science class and was immediately approached by one of the deaf students. Now, there are two deaf students (really, hard of hearing, but whatever) in this class; I interpret for one student, a girl, and a colleague interprets for the other student, a boy. The boy is the one who approached me...to show off his new hairdo. Which, as I'm sure you can infer from the title of this post, was eerily similar to Mr. T's famous coif. Coincidentally, this student's name also happens to start with the letter 'T,' so nicknaming him "Mr. T" would be perfect. Except that I can't use that name now because I made the split-second decision upon his approach to consciously ignore his new hair cut, for several reasons:

The first being, it looks ridiculous.

The second, I know this student pretty well by now and I knew that he was just looking to get a reaction from me, just like the times he played Charles Nelson Reilly with his glasses. Or tried to get me to arm wrestle in class (I actually caved once on this during some down time at the end of the period and soundly defeated him, which one would think would stop him from challenging me again and again, but it did not). Or stood next to his desk and attempted to moonwalk up and down the aisle while class is in session. Or various other wacky behaviors.

The third, because I know this student so well by now, I knew that he was going to be distracted by his hair for the entire day and me making a fuss out of his hair was just going to feed into that distraction. And he was distracted by his hair, literally touching it, pointing to it, and turning to the other students to get them to notice every five to ten minutes. And I'm not exaggerating on the time frame. I'm in the same classroom as this kid five periods out of the school day and the "look at my hair" behavior didn't stop.

The fourth, I was horrified by the mohawk and my mother taught me that if I didn't have anything nice to say than I shouldn't say anything at all. Thanks, Mom! (And sorry about the first reason, it wasn't very polite of me).